Every one of these stories eventually ends with, "And the cellular carrier has issued credits to lower their bill to $1000."
So what's the big deal?
I do agree, however, that companies should at least send a text message or email whenever your monthly bill starts to reach double its normal amount. It might even be in their interest to do that, too, by using that as a way to sell more plans and lower complaints to customer service.
Common theory is that you put more "stuff into the atmosphere" by buying a new Prius than driving around your old car (unless your old car was a real smogger).
Sure, but the group that works on HPUX (which I think is in deep hybernation) is probably so far removed from projects like a consumer HP desktop, that we might as well not even consider it HP.
This fanboy wants HP to attempt to write *more* software?
He obviously hasn't ever used an HP interface for scanners, printers, fax machines, or just any other 250 MB download just to send something to a printer.
Besides, most of the magic on this device is Vista running in Tablet mode, with a few little skins that HP threw together in their typical half-ass fashion. If I got one of these devices, I'd likely format it and just let Vista Ultimate do its thing, running in Media Center mode with a few nifty add-in gadgets.
Actually, I've already seen touch-screen and WiFi picture frames in the stores. They're pricey, but I'm sure that will drop soon.
They were smart with the touch-screens, I think. Only a small portion of the frame is touch enabled, which not only lowers costs but keeps messy fingerprints off your $200 display.
The WiFi-enabled ones will pull data off an internet site, which you upload your photos to. Some even let you subscribe to Flickr slideshows or something like that.
Perhaps those Chinese restauranteurs are smarter than we think!
Now every geek across the world has heard of the Translate Server Error cafe, and the five of us that get out of our mom's basement and head to China for the Olympics are definitely going to look for this place and try it.
With all of the blog/twitter aggregators out there, and the ability to program agents to notify me on certain keywords, I highly doubt they'd go to the trouble of sniffing packets just to look for posts about Comcast.
The false-positives would be astounding.
But, sifting through 100-200 blog posts a day would be an easy task for a single employee.
The headline and article make it sound like this is a bad thing. But is it?
A company is striving to make happy customers, and they've found that they can listen (gasp!) to what they're saying and try to help them.
They have probably found a way to scour blogs, forums, and apparently twitter and aggregate it for people to review and follow up with. I don't consider that a privacy issue if it's in a public location for all to read, as blogs typically are.
That's a whole lot better than not taking any action at all, or trying to shut down the offending blog. Normally we'd bitch about a company sending out the lawyers, but sending out someone from customer service? Sounds like a win to me.
You're absolutely right. If more people worked where they lived, this wouldn't be nearly the big deal that it is.
There are obvious exceptions though. Delivery vehicles, service technitians, and the like. I do quite a bit of road travelling for business as well, but I try to take public transportation when it makes sense.
I've been in the mood to buy a more fuel-efficient car like a Prius or other hybred, until I did some simple math.
And, even with one of these amazing 235 MPG cars, the dollars don't make it attractive.
If a car gets 235 MPG, and I drive 15,000 miles per year, at $5 per gallon of gas, that's $320 per year I would spend. The same math with a car that gets 25 MPG would spend $3000 per year.
So yeah, I would save $2600 per year in gas with this ultra-efficient car. However, this car might retail for as much as $30k or $40k. This is probably $10-20k more than an equivalent non-efficient car. I would have to keep the car around for 4-8 years before seeing a return on that investment.
And the Prius with it's 60-ish MPG would take well over a decade.
Your recommendation would constitute as unsolicited bulk email, and in many regions would his employer in legal hot water.
In California, that would constitute a $500 fine per email unless he could prove each and every one of those people requested communications from him or was an existing customer of his. Doing a "public service" is still illegal in this case.
And, there are people who make a small fortune just going around suing small-time spammers. If one of them happens to be on this list, there's $500 down the drain.
Re:Does Red Cost You More?
on
The Red Team Wins
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I have heard from more than one patrol officer that they will likely see a speeding red car more often than a speeding car of any other color.
So while your insurance company won't fault you for getting red, your chances of getting a ticket increases. And, with more tickets, your insurance rate goes up.
There might be statistics out there to back me up, or not.
Maybe something already exists, but wouldn't it be cool if there was some kind of app that people could install on their laptops that would upload metrics to a central server and make it available to review?
The app could tie into the 3G card and pull your approximate location, your carrier, and your average speed and upload it all to a server. As long as it doesn't also upload personal data, or your IP, etc, I can't foresee privacy issues (and it would be opt-in anyway).
With enough people running an app like this, the data could come together quite nicely and allow people to view a map overlayed with the different networks and average performance.
And I bet such a site could be supported by ad revenue. (3: Profit)
In 2014, Microsoft will stop all support of Windows XP. Oh noes!
You guys DO realize that this would be like someone running Windows 95 today, right? XP came out in 2002 and was replaced in 2007. A full seven years after that, XP will be phased out. There will likely be two major OS releases, plus Vista, by the time that happens.
Not to mention this has already happened with every other Windows release to date, including Windows 2000. In fact, Windows 2000 (Professional and Server) officially lost Mainstream Support in the middle of 2005, and its Extended Support (security updates only) will end in 2010. That's a 10 year lifespan.
The real story here is that Microsoft has committed to supporting an OS for 12 years after you paid less than $200 for it.
I agree. Does the same university also recommend users NOT install patches, especially critical updates?
What they should be recommending is that users check the list of known incompatibilities and then, if they don't see any conflicts in that list, that they go ahead and update.
Remember that they're talking about machines outside of their own control.. mainly student machines and possibly some faculty/staff personal machines.
Slashdot Mirror
Every one of these stories eventually ends with, "And the cellular carrier has issued credits to lower their bill to $1000."
So what's the big deal?
I do agree, however, that companies should at least send a text message or email whenever your monthly bill starts to reach double its normal amount. It might even be in their interest to do that, too, by using that as a way to sell more plans and lower complaints to customer service.
Common theory is that you put more "stuff into the atmosphere" by buying a new Prius than driving around your old car (unless your old car was a real smogger).
Sure, but the group that works on HPUX (which I think is in deep hybernation) is probably so far removed from projects like a consumer HP desktop, that we might as well not even consider it HP.
This fanboy wants HP to attempt to write *more* software?
He obviously hasn't ever used an HP interface for scanners, printers, fax machines, or just any other 250 MB download just to send something to a printer.
Besides, most of the magic on this device is Vista running in Tablet mode, with a few little skins that HP threw together in their typical half-ass fashion. If I got one of these devices, I'd likely format it and just let Vista Ultimate do its thing, running in Media Center mode with a few nifty add-in gadgets.
Actually, I've already seen touch-screen and WiFi picture frames in the stores. They're pricey, but I'm sure that will drop soon.
They were smart with the touch-screens, I think. Only a small portion of the frame is touch enabled, which not only lowers costs but keeps messy fingerprints off your $200 display.
The WiFi-enabled ones will pull data off an internet site, which you upload your photos to. Some even let you subscribe to Flickr slideshows or something like that.
They're referring to IP address tracking at the ISP and web host level (and perhaps the user's router). Not logs on the browser.
I don't have a link, but if you find the IE8 blog you'll see about 3 pages on what exactly the "Porn Mode" does. Pretty spiffy.
I'm going to assume that "Employment Details" probably means the Company Name you specified when you reserved a room.
Except the entire server is slasdhotted.
Perhaps those Chinese restauranteurs are smarter than we think!
Now every geek across the world has heard of the Translate Server Error cafe, and the five of us that get out of our mom's basement and head to China for the Olympics are definitely going to look for this place and try it.
With all of the blog/twitter aggregators out there, and the ability to program agents to notify me on certain keywords, I highly doubt they'd go to the trouble of sniffing packets just to look for posts about Comcast.
The false-positives would be astounding.
But, sifting through 100-200 blog posts a day would be an easy task for a single employee.
You're asking Slashdot users a legal question?
You must be new here.
The headline and article make it sound like this is a bad thing. But is it?
A company is striving to make happy customers, and they've found that they can listen (gasp!) to what they're saying and try to help them.
They have probably found a way to scour blogs, forums, and apparently twitter and aggregate it for people to review and follow up with. I don't consider that a privacy issue if it's in a public location for all to read, as blogs typically are.
That's a whole lot better than not taking any action at all, or trying to shut down the offending blog. Normally we'd bitch about a company sending out the lawyers, but sending out someone from customer service? Sounds like a win to me.
You're absolutely right. If more people worked where they lived, this wouldn't be nearly the big deal that it is.
There are obvious exceptions though. Delivery vehicles, service technitians, and the like. I do quite a bit of road travelling for business as well, but I try to take public transportation when it makes sense.
I've been in the mood to buy a more fuel-efficient car like a Prius or other hybred, until I did some simple math.
And, even with one of these amazing 235 MPG cars, the dollars don't make it attractive.
If a car gets 235 MPG, and I drive 15,000 miles per year, at $5 per gallon of gas, that's $320 per year I would spend. The same math with a car that gets 25 MPG would spend $3000 per year.
So yeah, I would save $2600 per year in gas with this ultra-efficient car. However, this car might retail for as much as $30k or $40k. This is probably $10-20k more than an equivalent non-efficient car. I would have to keep the car around for 4-8 years before seeing a return on that investment.
And the Prius with it's 60-ish MPG would take well over a decade.
Your recommendation would constitute as unsolicited bulk email, and in many regions would his employer in legal hot water.
In California, that would constitute a $500 fine per email unless he could prove each and every one of those people requested communications from him or was an existing customer of his. Doing a "public service" is still illegal in this case.
And, there are people who make a small fortune just going around suing small-time spammers. If one of them happens to be on this list, there's $500 down the drain.
I have heard from more than one patrol officer that they will likely see a speeding red car more often than a speeding car of any other color.
So while your insurance company won't fault you for getting red, your chances of getting a ticket increases. And, with more tickets, your insurance rate goes up.
There might be statistics out there to back me up, or not.
Judging by most of the people here, you won't have any better success with Ubuntu or SuSe either.
You might try Mac OS. Or at the least, get an iPhone and use it liberally while in public.
Windows Vista (some versions) now comes with a quite decent Chess game.
-David
Maybe something already exists, but wouldn't it be cool if there was some kind of app that people could install on their laptops that would upload metrics to a central server and make it available to review?
The app could tie into the 3G card and pull your approximate location, your carrier, and your average speed and upload it all to a server. As long as it doesn't also upload personal data, or your IP, etc, I can't foresee privacy issues (and it would be opt-in anyway).
With enough people running an app like this, the data could come together quite nicely and allow people to view a map overlayed with the different networks and average performance.
And I bet such a site could be supported by ad revenue. (3: Profit)
I believe you've stumbled upon this startup's business plan.
Prior art.
No. God gave your ancestor a mutant hinge so that you could cover up your PIN.
It's all part of His system of intelligent design.
</sarcasm>
As implausible as it sounds, the Bro Code was actually created shortly before the genetic code... in anticipation of such a necessity.
In 2014, Microsoft will stop all support of Windows XP. Oh noes!
You guys DO realize that this would be like someone running Windows 95 today, right? XP came out in 2002 and was replaced in 2007. A full seven years after that, XP will be phased out. There will likely be two major OS releases, plus Vista, by the time that happens.
Not to mention this has already happened with every other Windows release to date, including Windows 2000. In fact, Windows 2000 (Professional and Server) officially lost Mainstream Support in the middle of 2005, and its Extended Support (security updates only) will end in 2010. That's a 10 year lifespan.
The real story here is that Microsoft has committed to supporting an OS for 12 years after you paid less than $200 for it.
I agree. Does the same university also recommend users NOT install patches, especially critical updates?
What they should be recommending is that users check the list of known incompatibilities and then, if they don't see any conflicts in that list, that they go ahead and update.
Remember that they're talking about machines outside of their own control.. mainly student machines and possibly some faculty/staff personal machines.